Boeing banks on less disruptive plan to clean up aviation

As flying electric taxis and hydrogen fuel take center stage at the Singapore Airshow, Boeing Co.’s plan to clean up aviation is far less revolutionary. Rather than banking on new technology and different propulsion systems, the Chicago-based company is pushing a solution that will limit disruption to its mainstay plane-making business: Run the aircraft on sustainable aviation fuel. “You don’t have to change the airplane, you don’t have to change the airport infrastructure,” Sheila Remes, Boeing’s vice president of environmental sustainability, said in an interview in Singapore, where she was attending the show. “It’s available now so you don’t have a whole amount of infrastructure and complexity that needs to be added into the system.” Boeing’s focus on SAF, as it’s known, sets it apart from the more openly ambitious Airbus SE. The European rival aims to put a hydrogen-powered aircraft into the skies by 2035. At this week’s Singapore Airshow, Airbus agreed to explore the potential for a hub in the city to store hydrogen and deliver it to jets. Remes said the current shortcomings of alternative technologies mean sustainable fuel will be aviation’s most-powerful decarbonization tool for years to come. The range of electric aircraft will be limited unless there’s “gigantic battery technology improvement,” she said. And while Boeing is exploring how hydrogen might be integrated into commercial aircraft, Remes said it’s “going to be hard.”<br/>